Best Practices and Tools for Instagram in 2021
During my personal interest project, I have made many discoveries and found what has worked for me and what has not. As time continues, I can only imagine that I will learn more and strive for better moving forward.
For my project, I chose Instagram as my social media platform and have truly enjoyed it. It has been neat to see how people have reacted to my content, and what caught their attention. There have been many tips and tricks that have helped me thus far that I will implement as time goes on. These are considered to be “best practices”. But what are considered to be “best practices” and how have I used them? Let’s dive in.
Best Practices
According to 10 Social Media Best Practices for 2021, best practices are steps needed to assert and improve your brand presence. These are the steps that are going to provide you with the best outcome possible for your brand and allow for it to grow as quickly as possible.
For Instagram, there are a variety of best practices that can be used to increase the exposure and get the best results for a particular brand.
Best Practices for Instagram
In 10 Instagram Best Practices You Should Be Following in 2020, there are many options recommended that have the ability to improve a brand. The options that I am currently using are stated down below, as well as my reasoning for why I chose to use them.
- Establish a business profile.
This option allows you to launch and track campaigns, gives people the opportunity to view your contact information, access real-time data, etc. I used this in particular because it gave me the ability to define my target audience and see when they were most active.
2. Don’t let your creative get stale.
Experimenting with editing tools allows for a larger variety in social media, therefore attracting a larger audience. There are other options as well, such as experimenting with color, using different Instagram tools, trying new content angles, etc.
3. Rock those Instagram stories.
This option allows you to be creative, and give followers a different glimpse of your style. I use this feature a lot for holiday posts, upcoming news, behind the scenes looks, etc.
4. Expand your reach with hashtags and geotags.
This allows for different people to find you, some even being located within the same area. I recently began to use hashtags and have found them to be helpful.
Additionally, other best practices suggestions were mentioned that I have yet to use. Some of the other suggestions include: creating a content calendar, using insights to track engagements and conversions, turning organic posts into marketing gold, make it easy to do business with you, etc.
14 Social Media Best Practices You Should Follow In 2020 mentions suggestions as well, that I have used thus far. Some of the following are stated below.
- Learn everything you can about your audience.
This allows you to find what will and will not work in the future. I have used analytics to find out more about my audience, and I can definitely say it has helped.
2. Choose which networks to use and which to ignore.
This helps you see what works best for your audience and can be the most successful for your brand. I chose Instagram, and found it best fit for my audience.
3. Have a plan.
Having a plan helps your audience as well as your brand. I had a plan as well as other miniature series of photos such as #throwbackthursdays which have been incredibly fun to do.
Other suggestions made by the article include: keeping an eye on the competition, listening for mentions of your brand, monitoring conversations relevant to your industry, establishing a voice and tone, etc.
Additional tools
There are also other tools that help you connect to your audience in the best manner, and strive for results. One of the most important tools would be to establish posting times for your audience. This is important because it allows for your posts to get more engagement and overall exposure.
According to Top 10 Instagram Scheduling Tools to Automate Your Instagram Posts in 2021, there are a myriad of tools to help with this. The most highly recommended are Loomly, AgoraPulse and Hootsuite.
These tools help you schedule posts, create drafts, publish posts, see post details, select social channels, and more. Hopefully now that we have discussed helpful tools, you can explore Instagram with a different mindset. Happy Instagram posting!
